Free Republic

A hybrid derived from the Greek words meaning “well” and “born,” the term eugenics was coined in 1883 by Sir Francis Galton, a British cousin to Charles Darwin, to name a new “science” through which human beings might take charge of their own evolution. The Eugenics Crusade tells the story of the unlikely –– and largely unknown –– movement that turned the fledgling scientific theory of heredity into a powerful instrument of social control. Perhaps more surprising still, American eugenics was neither the work of fanatics, nor the product of fringe science. The goal of the movement was simple and,...

The Sterilization of America: A Cautionary History "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…Three generations of imbeciles are enough." — Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in Buck v. Bell, 1927 Eugenics, a word all but removed from America’s lexicon after World War II, is the "science" of improving the human race through controlled breeding. Much like the Trail of Tears, Tuskegee medical experiments, or the Japanese internment in...